It's like family, only weirder...

sensual

I had written about Silver Stars shortly after they had opened, and today I report on another momentous event for Gainesville and its small business community. Silver Stars has been shut down indefinitely for failure to obtain a proper business permit. Funny thing is, they were given a permit to do business originally. After these several months, the City Council’s office has finally over-ruled the original permit granted.

I had originally applauded the city’s apparent progressive attitude towards new business ventures in the likes of adult novelties, though now I see this was a mistake. Silver Stars seemed to be doing well in their inauguration into the Gainesville business community. I know they had many customers, friends, and partners throughout the city. Their website reports that they are still able (and encouraging people) to process online orders. There is some glimmer of hope, I suppose, that they may be able to work out a business license through some loophole. Should that happen, they’ll be back in business until the Council finds some other way to shut them down.

Incidentally, I’m looking through the City Ordinances trying to find the specific violation, but have been unable to do so. If anyone can point me to the specific code, I’d appreciate it.

It was about a year ago that I wrote about Gainesville’s decision to close its doors to the occult. If you’re on the business end of the occult, maybe now is a good opportunity to try out your entrepreneurial venture again! Gainesville is now the happy home of one Silver Stars: A Sensual Boutique. This year’s Chamber of Commerce approval board must be a younger, more accepting group, though I haven’t heard of any reversals yet on fortune tellers.

Silver Stars is described as a classier place, targeting primarily women and couples:

Forget venturing into the sleazy adult video store in the seedy part of town. We strive to provide women and couples with a safe, clean, upscale and positive environment that presents all of our products in a fun and intuitive way.

Not for nothing, the store is located just over the city line to avoid some harsher political scrutiny, as well as maintaining a minimum amount of pornographic material. I believe it’s the magazines that can get you shut down in Gainesville, but their videos are described as “educational” just in case. However, if I read quickly through the list of items bulleted on their site, I get the false impression that I might be able to do a lot of my Christmas shopping there too:

Jeff McClure got a gig with this month’s Dames A’Flame burlesque show in Atlanta. Contrary to what you might imagine (and shame on you), Jeff was not decked out in the style of burlesque. No, he performed his magic act with some witty banter with the girls to get some laughs. It went well and he got his laughs. I think the audience really dug the act.

I was asked to film his part of the show for a demo in progress. I’ve never been to any type of burlesque show before, so I thought the opportunity sounded great. I gathered up the women folk (Jeff’s and mine) and we headed out for a night of unusual entertainment. If you don’t recall, I had done the 99x CAR-nival show on stilts recently. There I met several of the girls from Dames A’Flame, which were not exactly as I had imagined. So going to their show was going to be a good way to connect the people I spoke with to the entertainment they provided.

Once at the Vortex for dinner, we had a near miss of getting into the show entirely. They had only one ticket left for the 8:30pm show and I didn’t feel like going ahead while leaving the girls behind to amuse themselves for a couple of hours. After some discussion and rather long wait times at dinner, we decided we may as well stay for the 11:00pm show. And there was a Starbucks across the street which sweetened the deal.

The show was very funny, but in a low-brow sort of way. The campiness and general cheese of the whole show had me laughing through the whole of it. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect regarding nudity, but there was plenty of nudity or nudity+pasties if you don’t want to include that in the same category. I don’t know what the definition of burlesque is, but here’s my summary from exposure: